Upward Mobility: Myth for Most Black Americans

ColorLines' Kai Wright says that the black middle class is shrinking. Wright examines the Economic Policy Institute's upcoming State of Working America report, saying that it actually makes a simple point: Upward mobility is a myth for a huge percentage of black Americans, including those who were born into the middle class. In 2008, 45 percent of African Americans who were born into the middle class, measured by income, were living at the bottom income level as adults. That was true for only 16 percent of whites born into the middle class. Meanwhile, more than half of black people who were born into poverty remained there as adults, while about two-thirds of whites had moved up the income ladder.

The point is plain: Economic mobility is not the same for everybody in America. The other point is that the ideology that all is equal in America is at best a figment of the imagination, and at worst an outright lie.